6.4: Minimal History of Latin America

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The indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere were numerous and had enormous linguistic and cultural diversity. By the 15th century, two great empires occupied much of what is now Spanish America (the part of America where Spanish is spoken): the Aztec empire (Nahuatl culture) in Mesoamerica and the Inca empire (Quechua language) in South America.

Conquest

Since 1492, the Spaniards carried out an immense military, religious and commercial campaign to explore, subdue, assimilate and take advantage of the territories discovered by the Christopher Columbus expedition, which they called “The Indies” and which Christians considered theirs by divine right. Thousands of Spaniards, most with little education and opportunities in their country, embarked on this adventure to improve their living conditions and collaborate in the conversion of “the Indians” to the Catholic religion, considered the only door to heaven. With this mentality, still quite feudal, a rapid process of invasion, evangelization and establishment of governments, cities and centers of commerce began, especially in what is now Cuba, Mexico and Peru. By 1550, the two great Aztec and Inca empires were under the control of Spain, which extended its dominions from present-day California to Patagonia, with the exception of Brazil, which was granted to Portugal (along with Africa) through the Treaty of Tordesillas from 1494.

Colonial era

Between approximately 1525 and 1825, all of the Spanish-American territory was part of the Spanish kingdom. Two main centers of government were Mexico and Lima, from where two direct representatives of the king, the viceroys, governed. In the 18th century, two other viceroyalties were created: La Nueva Granada, with its capital in Bogotá (1739), and Buenos Aires, with its capital in La Plata (1776). With the exception of cities, where there were systems of government (courts) comparable to those of the Peninsula, most of the territory was governed by the military. The economy was mainly extractive and agricultural: mines and crops to be sent to Spain and from there sold to Europe or to the rest of the world. The labor force was almost always composed of indigenous people and Africans —and of the ethnic mixes with them—who generally received only what was necessary for their survival for their work. Madrid had a policy of strict commercial monopoly, although, in practice, piracy and illegal smuggling existed throughout the American territory (“The Indies”). An active cultural life—with numerous universities, architectural initiatives and study centers— and diverse —with cultural influences from Africa, America and Europe—was encouraged, but also restrictive. In general, only Creoles (children of Spanish couples) and some mixed race (a mixture of Spanish and indigenous) had access to education and to positions of relative power, and the highest authorities were usually sent and appointed from the Peninsula.

Starting in the 17th century, when other European kingdoms became more prosperous (thanks, in part, to the African slave trade, military victories and industrial and commercial development), vast regions of the Spanish empire in America became a zone of contention for occupation and smuggling, especially with England, France and the Netherlands, in particular the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast of North America. Spain did not participate in the slave trade from Africa—although it was legal to own them in its territories— nor did it promote the development of manufacturing (because it had the gold to buy it from other countries), with which capitalism in the Hispanic Indies developed more slowly and unevenly than in other regions of the world. Knowing these colonial processes allows us to understand many aspects of the mentality and social structure of Spanish-American countries up to the 21st century.

Era of Independencies

During the 18th century, non-conformism grew — often violent — against the economic and political structures imposed by Madrid. Starting in 1808, when the King of Spain was imprisoned by French forces, many citizens of the Indies decided to organize independent governments. However, in 1814, the absolutist monarchy was restored in Spain, and troops were sent to America to re-establish control of the crown. After long wars, by 1825 the entire mainland of Spain had been reorganized as a group of independent nations, proud of their heroic campaign. Only the Caribbean territories of Cuba and Puerto Rico remained part of Spain until 1898. The wars were costly and unequal, and the new countries faced multiple internal divisions—social, political and territorial— as well as considerable debts to international banks, especially the English one.

Republican era

From approximately 1825 to 1875, Spanish-American life focused on the organization of national governments. Most countries opted for republican (not monarchical) forms of government, but with democracies restricted to peoples accustomed for centuries to the vertical regime of the colony, peoples whose ethnic, cultural and social diversity was difficult to unite in a sense of national identity, at a time when communication through difficult geographical conditions was slow and when both regional leaders (warlords) and ethnic and union communities demanded local autonomy, by arms if necessary. The elite was also deeply divided between those who favored trade and modernization and those who wanted to maintain their aristocratic privileges as landlords. In addition, economies did not compete well with capitalist dynamics, and financial dependence on foreign powers such as France and England, considered the model of civilization to be imitated, deepened. Numerous civil wars, changes of government, fragmentation of territories and the rewriting of national constitutions were the central characteristics of the sociopolitical life of that period, from Mexico to Argentina.

She was an exporter

Around the 1870s, many Latin American countries reorganized their economies around the opportunities that opened up with the European and North American Industrial Revolution, exporting specific products to France and England, and little by little to the United States, such as coffee from Brazil, meat and wool from Argentina, copper from Chile or sugar from Cuba, among others. This marked a period of relative prosperity and political stability, the growth of the middle classes and the progressive development of urban centers. At the same time, almost all textiles, machines, armaments and luxury items were imported at high prices, making local economies dependent on international banks and foreign investors. Latin America had found its “niche” in the international economy, as a supplier of raw materials for the industrial development of what in the 20th century would be called the First World. There was a trend towards the “Europeanization” of cultural production, and part of the Latin American elite became an exporting bourgeoisie with greater entrepreneurial impetus, valuing technical innovation and commercial success. But the productive base was still agrarian and mining, with the colonial scheme of paying for labor only the minimum for the workers' survival, so that most of the town had little purchasing power. Prosperity, however, led to uprisings towards social change, as was the case of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1919) or the Thousand Day War in Colombia (1899-1902), to mention just two examples. At the same time, American influence on the continent was on the rise — and would continue to increase throughout the 20th century. Politically, for example, Cuba and Puerto Rico separated from Spain in 1898 and Panama from Colombia in 1903, to enter the North American sphere of power.

He was a nationalist

With the depression of world capitalism during the 1930s, international demand for agricultural products and raw materials was halved, the exporting bourgeoisie weakened, and the traditional landowning elite regained government control, often with military support through authoritarian governments in most countries. The army thus regains its influential role in Latin American politics, and some nationalist wars reappear, such as those in Bolivia-Paraguay (1933-38); Colombia-Peru (1932-34); Perú-Ecuador (1941-42).

To respond to unemployment and the scarcity of imported products, the strategy of encouraging the development of domestic manufacturing is generalized in a protectionist policy that was called “industrialization by import substitution” (ISI). To this end, governments raised taxes on imports, founded or financed new industries, kept wages low, and reduced taxes on household products. Nationalist propaganda, efforts to regain state control over natural resources, and a sense of pride in one's own in the face of foreign affairs were also encouraged. One of the formulas was populism, a pro-industrial and pro-military alliance that tried to incorporate the interests of businessmen and at the same time satisfy some workers' demands under the magnetism of an authoritarian and charismatic leader, such as Perón in Argentina, Vargas in Brazil, Rojas Pinilla in Colombia and, to a certain extent, Arbens in Guatemala, Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador and Cárdenas in Mexico. In other cases, different political parties included several emerging groups (Chile), were excluded by force of dictatorships (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Paraguay), or coalitions were generated for armed resistance through guerrillas (Colombia, El Salvador). In some cases, these coalitions managed to seize power and carry out liberal reforms for a time, such as in the 1936 Revolution in Paraguay, the 1944 Revolution in Guatemala, and the 1952 Revolution in Bolivia. However, these types of revolutions would become increasingly difficult within aggressive American politics to ensure the loyalty of the continent in “The Cold War” (1945-1991).

Era of urban expansion

With industrialization and rural violence, cities grew rapidly: between 1950 and 1970, many capitals doubled in size and number of inhabitants, and the Latin American population went from being rural to mostly urban. Economic expansion also benefited from U.S. investment, which, after World War II, became the Hemisphere's main trading partner, while Western Europe had to liquidate its investments in America to pay for the war. Thus, Latin America fully entered Washington's sphere of power during the Cold War, in many cases breaking relations with the Soviet Union and declaring local communist parties illegal — which also coincided with the interests of the economic elite.

Meanwhile, popular support for communist parties grew in many Latin American countries, and armed resistance in the form of guerrillas acquired from the 1950s onwards a radical nationalist dimension: the “liberation” of US imperialism and capitalist exploitation, sometimes with funding from the Soviet Union and China. The lasting victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 was a motivation for the proliferation of “national liberation struggles” throughout Latin America. For popular activists, for the first time it seemed possible for workers and peasants to take control of the State and obtain the right to health, education and a decent standard of living through communist governments. The 1960s were one of revolutionary enthusiasm and “Latin Americanism”. In Chile, a left-wing coalition (the “Popular Unity”) won the elections in 1970, and Salvador Allende, the new president, nationalized the copper mines that were in the hands of foreign companies, raised workers' salaries and froze the prices of basic necessities, among other socialist-type reforms. This was a wake-up call for Washington and the elites, who had tried reform policies in the 1960s with funding from Kennedy's “Alliance for Progress”, but now opted for militaristic repression to protect “national security”, taking advantage of Nixon's hard line. By 1976, the army was in command of almost all Latin American countries, some of them populist (Peru), others of the extreme right (Chile), and repressive policies became common, even in democratically elected governments.

In the economic field, the governments of the 1970s sought to control inflation and favor the expansion of multinational corporations. The economic growth of these years was largely dependent on external indebtedness, which in just ten years increased from 27 thousand to 231 billion dollars. At the beginning of the 1980s, the biggest debtors (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico) declared themselves unable to pay, and the region's total economy declined cumulative by 10%. The lenders prescribed strict economic reform measures: liquidating domestic protectionism, reducing the size of the State (privatizing public services, for example), promoting new exports and, above all, facilitating free markets and foreign investment. These reforms are known as neo-liberalism or “the Washington consensus” (headquarters of the international financial companies that defended these policies). Such political and economic strategies worsened the living conditions of high percentages of the population. This was the breeding ground for desperate activities such as organized crime and terrorism. Drug trafficking, for example, became a transnational, multi-million dollar business that began to offer alternatives for prosperity in the late 1970s. Partly financed by this business, illegal armed groups of the extreme left or right emerged or gained new strength in Colombia (FARC, self-defense groups) and Peru (Sendero Luminoso, MRTA).

Neoliberal era

With the end of the Cold War in 1991, global communism lost credibility and left-wing guerrillas weakened. Dictatorships were also left without their main justification (“National Security”) and without the support of Washington. In addition, foreign investment tended to prefer constitutional stability, and civil protests by middle sectors in favor of human rights also put internal and external pressure on democracy. Thus, almost all Latin American countries, except socialist Cuba, had presidents elected by direct vote in 1991. Economic policy was once again open to trade, as in the years of liberalism at the end of the 19th century, so this era has been called the “neo-liberal era”.

In the following years, almost all of these democracies were strengthened and expanded, with political reforms towards more participatory democracies, as in the constituent assemblies of Colombia and Ecuador in the nineties, or in the electoral opening of Mexico. This democratic expansion allowed the revival of social activism. Organizations of women, of African descent, of homosexuals, of human rights defenders, and many others, highlighted the socio-cultural heterogeneity of the region, disputing the idea that there could be only one answer to popular needs (revolution, socialism). A thermometer of the dynamism of popular movements was the electoral force of left-wing coalitions that came to the presidency in many countries, in a trend that has been known as “the Pink Tide”, because it represents a more moderate ideology than the “red” communism of the 20th century. The political tone is different in each case, but between 2000 and 2009, two lines can be identified: one similar to the populism of the 20th century with nationalist initiatives, authoritarian tactics and acts of accelerated constitutional transformation with negative economic consequences (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua), and another more centrist with policies that sought to maintain economic growth, favor private investment and gradually improve the distribution of wealth (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia). Both trends favor trade integration between regions with comparable economies (Caricom, Mercosur), but they distrust free trade agreements between economies that are too unequal (NAFTA, CAFTA).

This shift to the left is related to the mixed results of the neo-liberal reforms. On the one hand, inflation was controlled and trade openness produced respectable rates of economic growth. On the other hand, unemployment did not fall, social investment declined, the overall number of indigent people increased, and the gap between rich and poor deepened: in the nineties, 10% of the richest households received 40% of income. These conditions also contributed to the increase in drug trafficking and emigration. Adding another dimension to the concept of “globalization”, the high number of Latin Americans who have emigrated —with or without a visa— to the United States since the 1970s, to Europe and Asia since the nineties, and from Venezuela to all of Latin America since the 2010s, alters the electoral game in Washington and fosters a continental consciousness. Just to give an economic example of their impact, the Inter-American Development Bank calculated that in 2006 these emigrants sent to their countries a figure higher than that year's foreign investment in the region. In this way, and adding the dimension of the “orange” or virtual economy, as well as the political impact of social networks, the place of Latin America in the world economy and culture is increasingly fluid and seems to have before it interesting possibilities for autonomy and integration.